news in brief

Thursday

BEIT HANOUN, Gaza Strip — Three young Palestinian cousins were killed yesterday in Gaza in what the Israeli army said was an attack on rocket launchers aiming at southern Israel.

The Israeli army said it spotted figures handling rocket launchers in northern Gaza, and attacked them from the ground. Witnesses confirmed there were rocket launchers in the area.

The Israeli military said it “wishes to express sorrow” for the “use of teenagers in terror attacks.” The army in the past has accused militants of using children to collect rocket launchers after they are fired, but it did not say the children killed yesterday were directly involved.

The area that was hit in Gaza is populated by civilians and is frequently used by Palestinian militants to launch rocket attacks against southern Israel. The army said 92 rockets and 118 mortars fell in Israel in the past month.

The three dead were identified as 10-year-old Mahmoud Ghazal, 10-year-old Sara Ghazal and 12-year-old Yehiya Ghazal, Palestinian officials said. They were all cousins, officials said.

“We heard a blast, followed by children screaming,” said another relative, Wasfi Ghazal. “We rushed over and found the children bleeding.”

“We are victims of the (Israeli) occupation and victims of the misconduct of fighters who have randomly chosen our area to target Israel,” Ghazal said.

BUNOL, Spain — Tens of thousands of warriors for a day hurled tons of ripe tomatoes at each other yesterday in an annual food fight that transforms this Spanish town into a sea of red mush.

On the cue of a rocket fired from town hall, municipal trucks hauled 117 tons of plum tomatoes into the main square and dumped them, setting the stage for one hour of good-natured warfare.

A second rocket signaled it was time to cease hostilities, and Bunol residents used garden hoses to spray down the tomato tossers and the rest of the town.

The event has its roots in a food fight between childhood friends and has become something of a calling card for Bunol, which is 25 miles north of Valencia on Spain’s east coast.

The Tomatina is held each year on the last Wednesday in August.

The festival draws tens of thousands of revelers from around Spain and abroad, including Japan, Australia and the United States. An estimated 40,000 people took part this year.

Local legend holds that the event began in the mid-1940s after a group of youngsters waged a food fight near a vegetable stand on the town square. They met again the next year and pelted each other — and passers-by — to start the annual tradition.

WASHINGTON — The chief U.S. envoy at North Korean nuclear talks said yesterday the United States will make sure close ally Japan is satisfied before lifting North Korea from a U.S. list of countries accused of sponsoring terrorists.

Christopher Hill acknowledged the North has raised the terror-list removal repeatedly as a crucial part of a February nuclear disarmament accord. But, he said, the United States is “not going to cup our eyes and pretend a country is not a state sponsor of terrorism if they are a state sponsor.”

Japan, the top U.S. ally in northeast Asia, is refusing to provide the North with energy and economic aid until the abduction of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s by North Korean agents is resolved. Many in Tokyo see the abduction issue as linked to the U.S. terrorism designation.

“We care very much what our Japanese friends and allies have to say about an issue,” Hill said.

Hill’s comments come ahead of meetings Saturday and Sunday in Geneva, Switzerland, between the United States and North Korea. Those talks will deal with the terror list, which the North says is evidence of hostile U.S. intentions.

PARIS — Even holy water from the Roman Catholic shrine at Lourdes can’t get by airport security screening passengers for suspicious liquids.

A passenger on a new Vatican-backed charter airline had to hand over a container of water collected at Our Lady of Lourdes Cathedral to security officials at the airport in southern France on Monday before boarding a return flight to Rome, officials for Mistral Air said. They identified the passenger as Italian television personality Paola Saluzzi.

Airport officials barred other pilgrims on the Mistral Air flight from taking holy water from the shrine back to Rome, the Italian news agency Apcom reported. The pilgrims protested that they had waited in long lines to fill up their bottles with holy water from the grotto.

ABBOTSFORD, Wis. — Police cited a legless man and his friend with drunk driving — the third and second such arrests for the men, respectively — saying the paraplegic was at the wheel while his friend worked the pedals.

Harvey J. Miller, 43, was steering the 1985 Chevrolet truck and Edwin H. Marzinske, 55, was operating the pedals when they were pulled over Aug. 18, according to a police report.

Miller, who was sitting in the driver’s seat, told officers he had too much to drink, but argued he wasn’t really driving since Marzinske was on the brake and the accelerator, police said. Marzinske was arrested on the same charge.

Miller received a citation for a third drunk driving offense. Marzinske was cited for a second drunk driving offense. Both men also were cited for driving after their licenses had been revoked.

From Associated Press reports.

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